Walking involves multiple, sometimes competing, objectives, including minimizing energy expenditure and maintaining stability. When stability is compromised, such as through sensory disruption, individuals often adopt wider step widths to maintain balance. However, it remains unclear whether these wider widths increase energetic expenditure or remain energy optimal....
No actionable change for clinical vestibular practice yet, but findings deepen understanding of how vestibular impairment drives gait instability and fatigue, which may inform future rehabilitation strategies.
Quantifying energy-stability trade-offs during vestibular disruption provides a biomechanical basis for the fatigue and fall risk commonly reported by patients with vestibular disorders.
- 01Vestibular disruption during walking forces a trade-off between energy efficiency and postural stability.
- 02Study used experimental vestibular sensory disruption in healthy human participants.
- 03Published online ahead of print in Journal of Experimental Biology (2026).
- 04Findings may help explain why patients with vestibular disorders fatigue faster when walking.
- 05Could inform design of vestibular rehabilitation protocols aimed at reducing fall risk and energy cost.
Vestibular sensory disruption creates measurable trade-offs between energy expenditure and walking stability in humans.
studysupported- PMID
- 42488969
- DOI
- 10.1242/jeb.251861.
- Journal
- Journal of Experimental Biology
- Publication type
- research_article
- Evidence level
- 2b
- Population
- Healthy human adults undergoing experimentally induced vestibular sensory disruption during walking
- Intervention
- Vestibular sensory disruption during treadmill/overground walking
- Comparator
- Normal (undisrupted) walking condition
Primary outcomes
Energy expenditure during walking; Postural stability during walking